


they call it stormy Monday (but Tuesday's just as bad)

by oh_simone



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 11:15:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For prompt: "Tendo has a habit of falling for Jaeger pilots fated to die. "</p><p>Tendo once loved a Jaeger pilot named Yancy. Chuck is nothing like him, except where it counts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they call it stormy Monday (but Tuesday's just as bad)

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of this was written right after I saw the movie and before a lot of the canon tidbits started floating up, so the characterizations may not be quiiite right.  
> Also, unbetaed-- I've been out of fandom for a long while. But if you'd like to beta for me, I'd be all over it. My very best to Minty, who stuck with me and assured me this was okay.

Yancy happens when Tendo is almost 28, having been at the Anchorage Shatterdome for less than a year. It's his second posting and he's CTO, which means that Tendo’s high scores and aptitude tests marked him for the accelerated path to a senior level position. It means the learning curve from cadet, to engineer, to chief technology officer at Anchorage is like trying to swim the English Channel—possible, but really damn difficult. The two years at Anchorage are not the height of Tendo’s life. Yancy is the one bright, beautiful point, like unfiltered California sunlight on pale skin, warm but to the point of burning. Most people who meet the Beckets remember Raleigh and his brassy, toe-to-toe attitude-- Tendo, who'd been in the academy at the same time as them, had been as entertained as anyone else by his legendary fights in the Kwoon Room (testimony to what happens when you set up arrogant, studio-trained martial artists with street brawlers who didn't know when to quit). But it is Yancy, just a little more level, a little more settled, who smooths over his brother's trail of ruffled feathers, whose easygoing words and smile charms the most reluctant, and who, when they properly meet in the Icebox, used to absently press a coffee from the cafeteria into Tendo's hands every early morning spent in the control room, thank him low and heartfelt after every mission that they come back sound, eyes crinkled around the corners and chin ducking slightly.  
  
Tendo doesn’t pay him much attention at first-- he's met most of the Jaeger pilots, shaken their hands at least once, is probably more familiar with their vital signs than their doctors, but beyond mission control, beyond the Jaeger, Rangers tend to keep to their own.

  
Yancy, though, likes knowing how things worked. He'd worked summers in construction like his father before, and his friends were the welders, the riveters, the engineers that surrounded each Jaeger.  
  
He lingers in the control room after missions, likes to see if he could help with some of the repairs on Gipsy in his downtime. Thankfully, Tendo's engineers are all too mindful of the safety rules to let Yancy man anything bigger than a staple gun, but it means that occasionally, Tendo's job is to run interference and keep the pilot out of the crew’s hair. This ends, more often than not, with the two of them inevitably huddled around a table in an empty conference room, Tendo furiously scribbling on his tablet, or notebook, or napkin, some revised schematic of Gipsy Danger's defenses. Yancy takes to hanging over Tendo's shoulder, one arm looped around his neck, hip pressed to hip, right hand evading Tendo's batting and clumsily penciling his own innovations: rocket launchers, puffy winged shoes, an enormous exploding pen tucked under the chest plate, a laser beam in the pointer finger, disco ball in the Conn-pod, an unfolding sword, _no two of them, for both arms_! Tendo snorts and shakes his head with a grin, shoving off Yancy like the overgrown yellow lab he is and dumping the sketches into his bag, to be carefully pressed and scanned later, sorted into a mislabeled file on Tendo's desktop.  
  
It takes Tendo nearly a half a year before he realizes that these impromptu brainstorming sessions aren't just work-related anymore. To be fair, Tendo hasn't dated anyone seriously since he'd left San Francisco; his last ex-girlfriend had been a nurse on shift at UCSF when the army started laying down fire and a stray shell had destroyed half of the wing she'd been in. Afterwards, Tendo has made do with school and occasional strangers at the bars. Since making CTO at Anchorage, not even those.

But one day, Tendo catches himself staring at the line of Yancy's throat as he laughs, head thrown back. They aren't even mocking up schematics or blueprints or even ideas anymore; he’d been telling Yancy about the time he'd tricked his former food-stealing roommate into eating cakes of pig's blood, describing the color of Newt’s face with relish. Tea and coffee have been replaced with flasks of engineering's best hooch (the one time they'd tried the biochemists' wares, Tendo had trouble remembering the rest of the night, except that everything had looked vaguely green and lisping while Yancy had sprawled on the table, murmuring the same four phrases in Russian and trying to lick the table without turning his head), and the floor manager had even started blocking off the room every three days so they could meet.  
  
"What?" Yancy says when he catches his breath back, face still red from laughter, that easy smile so bright it lodges in Tendo's chest cavity like a hook.  
  
"Nothing," Tendo stammers, suddenly flustered, and takes a larger sip of Engineer's Best than he means to. Yancy laughs again when Tendo coughs, and the sound curdles sweetly against Tendo's heart, warring with the cold slick feeling of panic deep in his gut.  
  
His midlife-crisis just knocks their knees together under the table. "Hey, I can tell you're chewing something over. Spill."  
  
"It's not important," Tendo shrugs, then musters up a self-deprecating grin. "Introspection. What does Raleigh think of this?" he asks abruptly, gesturing vaguely with his mug between the two of them, the room in general.  
  
Yancy looks a bit surprised. "Raleigh?" He rubs his chin with his thumb, looks a bit rueful. "He knows. Not a lot of secrets between us," he says wryly, as massive an understatement as any and taps his temple. "I guess he thinks it's a good thing-- he calls them playdates, because he's a gigantic dick," but it's said fondly, and paired with a smile.  
  
Tendo makes an affirmative noise and drinks some more. He thinks about the last few times he'd met with the younger Becket, and suddenly, the pointed looks and sly sotto-voce words make a lot more sense. There's a brief moment of speculative horror as he wonders just what exactly people think he and Yancy do together during their meetings (and then, just as brief, a second of regret that none of it actually happens).

  
That night, he says nothing, just quietly drinks a little more than he planned, and Yancy offers to walk him back to his quarters, concerned and hovering. With enormous willpower, Tendo convinces him not to; doesn't think he could manage a walk back pressed against Yancy's side and shoulders slung over those broad shoulders. Not without wanting to do something ill-advised. He staggers off, drunk and reeling from more than just alcohol, feeling the heavy gaze of Yancy on his back like a brand.  
  
For almost a week, Tendo avoids Yancy with a singleminded focus. He works. He tinkers. He schedules meetings with all his engineers and science officers to review their projects. He goes into Anchorage proper on his nights off, where the local bar owner knows his face and his guitar, and he plays the blues for their regulars, Muddy Waters and BB King and Eric Clapton sliding and reverberating past the steel frets to linger in the smoke-darkened air. In between shifts, he thinks about what-ifs, maybes, and buts. He imagines running his hands through Yancy’s thick golden hair, tasting the line of his shoulder. He wonders what it would be like, both of them in their boxers and leaning against each other and the kitchen counter in some anonymous shoe-box apartment, drinking coffee and still pre-verbal before the caffeine kicks in. He thinks about Kay Merritt in photonics, whose husband entered the Drift and never regained consciousness after his copilot suffered a seizure during a routine training exercise.

On Sunday night, he slinks back into the crew quarters, reeking of smoke and sweat and spilled bourbon, but on Monday morning, he is clean-shaven and sharp. When lunchtime rolls around, he takes his tray and sits down across from Yancy, and pretends not to see the naked relief on the other man's face. Tendo doesn't apologize; he wouldn't even know how. But he smiles a little more, lets Yancy push him around a little more, and if sometimes his hand lingers on the back of Yancy's neck longer than necessary, it's no one's business but his own.  
  
Yancy Becket is no fool, though. Raleigh scored higher grades, but Yancy is the one who knows people. In the academy, he had gained a reputation for knowing, with uncanny accuracy, when he was being lied to. Just good at reading people, he shrugs, useful as a party trick, but not much else. Even Tendo falls for his self-effacement, enough so that he forgets Yancy knows him better than just about anyone at this point; any change in behavior was going to stand out.  
  
When, a month later, Yancy falls into a contemplative silence during their regular meeting and watches him with an unblinking gaze, Tendo blinks and raises an eyebrow back questioningly.  
  
"Nothing," Yancy finally concedes. He doesn't look away from Tendo though, and it's starting to make Tendo antsy. Thankfully, he doesn't flush easily, but he does shift in his chair a little, uncomfortable with such close scrutiny.  
  
"Nah, man," Tendo insists, deliberately casual. "What's going on? You got somethin' to ask?"  
  
But Yancy doesn't reply, at least not in words. Instead, he reaches across the distance towards Tendo's face, his hand hesitating briefly over skin, before the pad of his thumb presses above Tendo's cheekbone gently, and drags down his cheek. After a moment, Yancy sits back, and his hand withdraws, the little point of heat along Tendo's face gone as well. He glances at his thumb, then rubs it on his shirt.  
  
"Just a little grease," he explains, and then looks up. His eyes are heartbreakingly kind as he leans forward. "Breathe, Tendo."

 

On one hand, it's a weight off his shoulders. Tendo has nothing to hide, not to Yancy, anymore. On the other, there's nothing really to take the edge of the quiet despair that comes, full-bodied and black when love is unreturned in the way you wish. But Tendo tries to convince himself this is the good kind of hurt; he's lived through heartbreak, through bitter break-ups. This unwieldy crush on a Jaeger pilot (and let's be honest; everyone has one on one of them), it won't last. And everyone in the PPDC knows better than to actually take an infatuation with a Ranger seriously-- pragmatically speaking, Rangers are called halfway across the world at a moment's notice; they will inevitably drag their Jaeger copilot into their personal relationships. Their lifespans are notoriously short.  
  
Tendo thinks—he _knows_ —a judicious application of alcohol, a weekend down in the city, a stranger's bed will go a long way to easing his heart. He believes it too, and in the early hours of morning in late February, he's coming back from two of those, when Gipsy Danger is deployed against a Category III kaiju, codename Knifehead.  
  
  
For nearly a week, Raleigh is in the hospital wing, and Tendo visits him twice-- once, when Raleigh was still out on painkillers, and looking so much like Yancy in his sleep, but not quite right, that Tendo backs out almost immediately and takes an extra shift on the control deck just so he won't need to think. The second time though, Raleigh is awake and withdrawn; he hasn't spoken a word, or so Tendo has heard, except to quit the program. Tendo's bringing him a bottle of Engineering's Best, as a terrible going away gift. The nurse on duty tells him not to expect much.  
  
But when Tendo steps into the hospital room, Raleigh glances up and watches, unreadable, as Tendo awkwardly sets the bottle down on the counter. There are some unopened boxes of chocolate stacked there along with get-well cards still in their envelopes. It’s almost noon, but the blackout curtains are drawn, and the room’s lights are almost too bright to bear.  
  
"Heard you're leaving us," Tendo offers, when the silence becomes uneasy. There's some spark to Raleigh's expression now that's slowly bleeding into his eyes as he tracks Tendo’s movements: bleak grief, and something knowing.  
  
Something dangerously like pity.

  
Tendo does not want to know what Raleigh saw in the Drift that would make him look at Tendo like that, even in midst of Raleigh's own mourning.  
  
He opens his mouth to speak, but Tendo takes an involuntary step back, and Raleigh pauses. His eyes flicker over Tendo's expression, and whatever he sees there must change his mind. The rest of the visit is silent, and when Tendo leaves, Raleigh is staring at the curtained window looking tired and haunted.  
  
Raleigh leaves the same day Tendo gets offered a transfer to Lima. He takes it.

 

* * *

 

 

Chuck Hansen is nothing like Yancy.  
  
Tendo can be forgiven for mistaking (briefly) the young Ranger for a dead one—he’d been flown in to Sydney from Lima a day ago to consult on the Mark-5 Jaeger, and had immediately been locked into a heated meeting with the Gulpilil, the CTO of the Sydney Shatterdome, and two of her programmers. When he’d finally been allowed to go to his rooms, exhausted and disoriented, the tall, blond Ranger at the end of the hall had stopped him dead in his tracks. His heart had stuttered for a moment before thudding into a raging beat that pumped one last burst of adrenaline into his system and cleared his mind. It wasn’t Yancy standing in front of his door, grinning and waiting to drag him down to the basketball court; it was a young man—still practically a boy—with sharp eyes and a sharper mouth, still a little rangy with youth, an affable bulldog at his feet.  
  
“You’re Tendo Choi,” the kid states in an Australian drawl, blatant challenge in his tone and posture.  
  
“That’s right,” Tendo allows after a moment, eyeing him while he pockets his hands to hide the shaking. The kid strides forward and sticks out his hand.  
  
“Chuck Hansen, pilot of Striker Eureka,” he tells him, shaking his hand. “That’s my Jaeger you’re working on.”  
  
Tendo rolls his eyes mentally at his conceit. One of _those_ pilots, he thinks, but just waits patiently for Chuck to get to the point. It doesn’t take long.  
  
“I’ve seen your work in Anchorage and Lima. Gipsy Danger was yours, before it got sent down to Oblivion.” Chuck’s mouth twists on the last word, scowling at the idea.  
  
“That’s right,” Tendo says warily. But Chuck just nods curtly, and his blue eyes flicker over Tendo.  
  
“You do good work,” he finally says. “I look forward to working with you.”  
  
“You too,” Tendo replies reflexively, a little surprised at the absence of threats. Chuck nods stiffly and turns away, tugging gently on Max’s leash. He’s at the turn of the hall when he pauses and speaks over his shoulder.  
  
“I expect you to do your best yet, Choi. I’m not about to be another Gipsy Danger.”  
  
And there it is, Tendo thinks as he pushes into his room. Any other day and Tendo would be furious at the cocky son-of-a-bitch’s words. Instead, the adrenaline crash hits at the same time as exhaustion and jet-lag. He barely manages to strip off his clothes before falling into a dead sleep on the cot.  
  
It doesn’t get better. The issue with Striker Eureka’s computing system is identified within the first day, but it’s the actual solution that requires an overhaul of twelve percent of Striker’s internal code. Essentially, this means that Tendo, who’s really only in Sydney to take notes of Striker’s functionality in preparation of updating Matador Fury, is roped into helping with the code, which takes place in front of computers, which are in labs that do not require hard hats and ground clearance to be in. Which means that Chuck has, for some reason, decided that Tendo’s input on Striker Eureka is the least reliable, and therefore needs to be surveyed with a hawk eye, despite not knowing any coding himself.  
  
Around the PPDC, Tendo has the reputation of being level-headed and calm in crises. It is one earned in the best and worst of moments of a singularly unpredictable war. He likes to think of himself as easy-going; not a pushover, but generally able to get along with most people he meets. But Chuck Hansen is not most people. Chuck Hansen, all of nineteen years of age, has accomplished what only one other person has been able to do—set Tendo scouring the Shatterdome floor plans for increasingly intricate plans to avoid him. He can’t honestly believe how he’d mistaken him for Yancy that first day—Chuck is darker, eyes a deep hazel blue, hair a shade more ombre; his smile cuts like razors, and he is brutally, unthinkingly honest. When they are in the same room, Chuck has a tendency to corner Tendo at his desk, demanding explanations of his work progress, and then of comparisons to the Lima Jaegers. Granted, Chuck is a sharp kid; he knows his Jaegers, and if legend is true, practically grew up in Striker’s cockpit. His questions are rarely fluff, often incisive, and occasionally challenging. If only Tendo didn’t feel like he was being subject to some sort of obscure test, he wouldn’t have minded as much as he did.

“Don’t take it to heart,” Herc Hansen tells him one afternoon in LOCCENT, where Tendo had been rewiring the console. Tendo pushes back from his position tucked under the console and spits the flashlight out of his mouth.  
  
“What?” he asks.  
  
Herc makes a complicated grimace, jerks his thumb back at the door that Chuck had just walked by, probably looking for Tendo to give him more grief. “He’s got no manners. Mostly my fault,” he admits, with a small crooked smile.  
  
Tendo shrugs easily, says diplomatically, “S’fine. Kid’s just curious, nothin’ wrong with that.” He pulls himself under the console again. “You could tell him though, if he wants to knock my hair, he needs to step his game up. Not an insult, being called after the King.” He hears Herc’s chuckle from the vicinity of his feet.  
  
“I’ll be sure to let him know. You a fan, then?”  
  
Tendo huffs laughter. “It was the only thing that could shut me up as a baby. My parents used to have one of those old Decca record players, you know?”  
  
“Mine too,” Herc tells him. “Kept a lot of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis around the house.”  
  
“My dad was more a folk and classic rock man,” Tendo tells him, screwing the last panel back, and sitting up. “One of those student protesters in ’89. First album I learned was probably ‘Peter, Paul and Mary’.”  
  
“I was always more partial to the Carpenters,” Herc admits with a grin.

  
Chuck finds them a few minutes later, discussing the slide guitar.  
  
“I was looking for you. Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” he frowns as Tendo climbs resignedly to his feet.  
  
“I was feeling quiet,” Tendo says simply, and scratches Max’s head obligingly before straightening up and glancing at the clock. “I gotta head out now,” he says to Herc, “but if you want to stop by sometime, I’ll show you what I mean; you don’t need a steel guitar.”  
  
“Thanks, mate, sounds good,” the older pilot agrees. Tendo tucks the screwdriver into his belt, plucks his discarded tie off the console top, and nods to Chuck politely as he leaves the room, ignores the younger Hansen’s eyes tracking his movements.

  
If it’s even possible, Chuck grows more hostile than before. While initially it was simply an aggressive accosting of Tendo’s time and space, now there’s a lot more silent glowering and vicious little snipes that make everyone uncomfortable and his father pinch the bridge of his nose and mutter something about being raised by robots. Now, every day that Tendo spends with Chuck Hansen without punching the mouthy brat in the face is another minor victory that gets him through the week. Herc tries to run interference, but he’s just about the only one; Sydney Shatterdome’s golden boy has more or less had the run of the place since he was nine. Still, sometimes Tendo can snatch a few days of peace when the Rangers are engaged in extended training sessions, and Herc himself is good company, though Tendo suspects it’s in part to make up for his hellish jackass of a son.  
  
In any case, he is well distracted in Sydney, until Tendo looks up one day to the calendar, and realizes it is late February—he’d had to extend his trip by an extra two weeks when he decided to adapt the Striker’s T-16 Angel Wings for Matador Fury. The anniversary of Yancy’s death is the following day, and he's suckerpunched by the reminder, the shock of fresh grief welling deep and fast. He’d almost forgotten—tucked away as he was, in Australia. He’d actually _forgotten_.  
  
“Tendo?” Gulpilil prompts, breaking Tendo out of his thoughts. She looks concerned. “Your lunch…”

  
“Oh.” He hastily adjusts his hold on the sandwich, inelegantly shoving the wilted lettuce and lukewarm chicken back into place. “Sorry, just,” _a flash of bright blue eyes, kind and warm_ , “got distracted.” Gulpilil doesn’t say anything, just nods and picks up the thread of conversation on operating systems. As they wrap up lunch and hustle back to the hangar, he nearly runs into Chuck, who opens his mouth, then shuts it just as abruptly. His gaze on Tendo is as cruel as always, but for some reason, he brushes by without saying anything. Tendo’s too distracted to think much on it.

In the afternoon, he tells Gulpilil he’s taking the next day off. If she thinks he’s going into the city to do some souvenir shopping, well, she’s only half right. Once he’d excused himself from the CTO, he comms Herc to let him know they’ll need to reschedule. Responsibilities taken care of, Tendo changes out of uniform and into a sturdy shirt, dark jeans and boots. He digs out his motorcycle jacket, carefully folds his ID and some bills into his pocket, and catches the next supply run into the city.  
  
King’s Cross is lit up with neon signs this late at night; Tendo slinks by under the blaringly lit Coca-Cola sign and dodges on one side a homeless man curled into the corner of a shop front, drunk college coeds on the other. There are a million distractions, but he keeps his head tucked down, even as he descends the stairs into a bar whose patrons don’t bother to look up as he shoulders through the door. It’s a proper dive bar; the seats are actually vintage by sole virtue of having not been replaced in over two decades, and Tendo’s shoes stick to the floor unpleasantly as he seats himself at the bar and slides a hundred-dollar bill to the bartender.  
  
Grimly and methodically, he proceeds to get himself staggeringly drunk.  
  
  
“Choi,” someone is saying. “Oi! Tendo, you alright?”  
  
Tendo ignores it. Sooner or later, they go away. They always do.  
  
But then there is a hand on his shoulder, another appearing on his glass—empty, huh, when did that happen?—and tugging it away gently.  
  
“Tendo, can you hear me?”  
  
Tendo grunts and tries to shrug off the hand, except the surface under his elbows tilts and slides away from him, and the hand only gets tighter, hauling him upright. He suddenly finds himself blinking at the blurry face of Yanc- no, no, not Yancy. Chuck. _Fuck._ Heh. It rhymes.  
  
He realizes he’s said all this aloud when Chuck scowls.  
  
“Jesus,” Tendo sighs, long and exaggerated and just, so fucking tired. “Je-sus _fucking_ Mary, what the hell’re you doing here? How’d you even get in you’re like, _twelve_. Go home, kid.”  
  
“I’m nineteen,” Chuck tells him icily. “I’m taking you back to base.”  
  
“I’m on libo,” Tendo tells him slowly, because Chuck clearly doesn’t understand. “I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
“Yeah y’are mate,” the bartender cuts in, pointing to the clock, which Tendo doesn’t even bother to look at—he’s too drunk to make out the numbers, which had kind of been the point. “You’ve closed out the bar, ‘n then some.”  
  
“Shit,” Tendo mutters and rubs his face, even though his skin’s gone numb after the second glass.  
  
“Drink some water,” Chuck instructs quietly, holding a cup to his mouth and Tendo does. He doesn’t pay attention as Chuck exchanges a few curt sentences with the bartender, just sets down the empty glass when he’s done and tries to stand up.  
  
“Let’s try that again,” Chuck says after a moment, and from very, very high above.

 

About twenty minutes later, they’ve made it out of the bar into some alley, and Tendo is busy throwing up into a grated storm drain. He’s starting to sober up, and the realization pisses him off, because he wants to be drunk and stay drunk until well past noon. Almost, he dares Chuck to say something judging, anything, so he’d have the excuse to break his stupid nose. Instead, Chuck keeps one hand steadying his back, the other handing him bottled water and tissues in turn. It’s kind of worse.  
  
He’s still feeling shaky by the time Chuck manages to hail a cab and pour him into the backseat, but, grudgingly, better. Instead he stares sullenly out the window, watching the streets flash by in a muted blur of colors. Chuck sits slumped away from him.  
  
“Just stop,” Tendo says suddenly. Next to him, Chuck stiffens.  
  
“Stop what?”  
  
Sighing, Tendo rolls his head over to give him his most unimpressed look. “Thinking about it. It’s none your business.”  
  
Chuck glares at him. “It is if you work on my Jaeger at sub-optimal functionality.”  
  
Tendo snorts involuntarily, because _Christ_ , this kid.

  
The silence stretches and stretches. He’s practically asleep when Chuck says, “Yancy Becket,” and Tendo’s eyes snap open.  
  
Unconcerned, Chuck continues. “You called me that. I’ve seen his pictures. We don’t look nothing alike.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“I’ve read the control room transcripts and seen the black box feeds; he-”  
  
Tendo punches him.  
  
More of a half punch—his coordination is shot, his aim even worse. His fist skids hard off one cheekbone and knuckles into the hollow of Chuck’s ear.  
  
“What the hell, Choi-” Chuck yelps outraged, and Tendo tries to hit him again.  
  
“Shut up,” he rasps, airless, one hand gripping Chuck’s shirt in a white-fingered hold, shaking him with each syllable. “Shut up, shut the _fuck_ up, _shut up_. You have _no_ fucking idea, you little _shit_.”  
  
“Of course I do,” Chuck retorts coldly, gingerly touching his face, and his eyes, black in the lack of light, bore into Tendo’s. “You’re in love with him. Still are.”  
  
“You don’t know _shit_ ,” Tendo hisses savagely, incandescently furious by now. He shoves him off harshly. Then, fed up, decides to get out of the moving car.  
  
“ _Holy_ —,” Chuck swears, lunging forward and hauling Tendo back around the waist before he can get the car door open. The cab driver eyeballs them warily, but Chuck’s arms are a Ranger’s vice-grip, grimly hanging on even as Tendo finally loses his temper and starts shouting and kicking and (he’ll deny this a million times later) biting.  
  
“I’m sorry,” hollers Chuck. Tendo rams an elbow back viciously and takes resentful pleasure at the grunt of pain. “Look— _fuck_ —I’m sorry, okay? Sorry, sorry, _you’re so bloody nuts_ , calm the fuck down, willya?”  
  
“ _I will cut you_ ,” Tendo snarls darkly.  
  
“I can’t understand you,” Chuck says, out of breath and exasperated. Tendo has to think that over for a moment before he can repeat it in English. But the break in momentum is enough for the anger to start draining, and that coldly poisonous, hollow-boned sorrow to seep back. This- this is not how he wanted to spend tonight, still conscious enough to remember Yancy and his smile and his screams. He covers his face with his hand. Warily, Chuck lets him go, but Tendo just stays motionless against the seats.

The rest of the trip back is silent, and their cab driver is extremely relieved by the time he peels out of the driveway, leaving Chuck and Tendo staggering up the steps to the Shatterdome.  
  
“C’mon,” Chuck mutters, hauling Tendo towards his quarters.  
  
“M’fine,” Tendo says dully, but Chuck seems determined to see him to his bed. He drags him down the hall, fishes the key out of his pocket, sits him down on his narrow bed, scowling all the while.  
  
Tendo falls back onto his pillow and stares at the ceiling. There’s a tug on his feet as his shoes are dragged off.  
  
“He was something else,” he murmurs, without really meaning to, and Chuck pauses. Tendo continues, because he might as well. “Had this- this stupid smile, whenever he thought he did something you wanted. All pleased with himself. Just,” Tendo’s hand comes up, traces that invisible curve of lips in the space above him.  
  
Suddenly, Chuck’s face fills that space, and Tendo reluctantly lowers his arm. “Did he know?” he asks, stone-faced. Tendo considers playing dumb for a moment, but decides it’s not worth the effort. He’s dead anyways.  
  
“Yeah,” he admits, looking away. “Didn’t matter. He didn’t feel the same.”  
  
“Do you regret it?”  
  
“No,” Tendo replies swiftly. “Never. Yancy’s—he’s—he was something else,” he finally repeats, a little helplessly. A beat later, he tries to laugh. “Not like this is important to you. Look, I won’t touch Striker until—oomph”  
  
It takes an embarrassingly long time before Tendo catches on. He is being kissed, a firm hand angling his face, strong lips against his own, and hot breath following his sharp intake of breath. There’s nothing but a numb, tingling pressure at first, but Tendo’s mouth is open in shock and suddenly the angle changes; static shock sweeps his skin, and adrenaline sears through his veins, blanks his brain. He’s not thinking anymore, just reflexively arches up even as he tugs Chuck closer. But Chuck pulls away suddenly and Tendo is blinking into the sudden light in his eyes, hands grasping on air, stone cold sober.  
  
“He was an idiot,” Chuck spits, and Tendo feels a reflexive flare of anger, except Chuck’s hand is still curled around his bicep, warm and just short of tight.  
  
“You didn’t know him.” Tendo’s impressed with how mild he manages to sound. Snarling, Chuck tears away before Tendo can do much more than sit up.  
  
“I don’t need to,” the young pilot says with that unbearable careless arrogance of youth. “He’s dead. That tells me everything.”  
  
“You-” Tendo struggles to say, but Chuck pins him with a hard, black stare.  
  
“I’m different,” he swears, low and harsh.  
  
Tendo opens and closes his mouth. He swallows around his dry throat. _This has to be a dream_ , he thinks. _I am drunk and delirious_. And then, _I’ve suffered for the past two months because the little shit has a crush_. None of that changes the fact that Chuck is waiting for an answer, inches away. After what feels like eternity, Tendo manages to say, only a little less weakly than he expects, “Prove it.”  
  
The slow grin that lights up Chuck Hansen’s face is brilliant and vicious, like the heart-stop clarity of free-fall, just before gravity hurtles you to the ground.

In less than a week, Tendo is heading back to Lima. The day after he sleeps off a heinous hangover that came closer to killing him than whiskey ever did, he goes back to the control room and nothing is different. He doesn’t think about Chuck or Yancy, doesn’t look up at every flash of bright, blond hair in the corner of his eye. He starts wrapping up his individual projects around Sydney, exchanging contact information with engineers and technicians. Gulpilil arranges dinner for a few of the officers, somehow gets it catered from off-base, and while Tendo turns down the alcohol, he enjoys himself anyways, especially when Fong hooks up an ancient karaoke machine and it turns out the codirectors in bioengineering do a pretty fantastic impression of Hall and Oates  
  
When the party breaks up near midnight, Tendo does a round of handshakes and pleasantries before heading for his room. At the turn of the hallway, his steps stutter when he spies the tall figure lingering outside his door. Chuck, Max panting at his feet, is leaning against the wall, almost an exact tableau of the first time they’d met. Despite himself, Tendo breathes in sharply, and Chuck startles at the noise, glancing over and scrambling upright. Neither of them speaks as Tendo approaches, Chuck sliding away wordlessly to let him open his door. He follows him in, whistling to Max to heel.  
  
Tendo had been tired before, but he’s tense now as he tugs loose his bowtie and shrugs out of the suspenders.  
  
“You ever get tired of dressing up like that?” Chuck asks.  
  
“Like what,” Tendo replies stiffly. The younger man shrugs and jerks his chin at him.  
  
“Like it’s Halloween and you’re Buddy Holly.”  
  
Rolling his eyes, Tendo continues unfastening his sleeves. “If you’re only here to insult me, you can leave now,” he says dryly gesturing to the door.  
  
There’s a scraping sound behind him, and when he turns around, Chuck has sauntered closer, eyes intent. “S’ not the only reason,” he promises, quiet and tense.  
  
“Chuck,” Tendo sighs, ignoring the bright flare of anticipation in his gut. “Kid-”  
  
“I’m not a kid,” Chuck snaps, but Tendo just raises an eyebrow at him until he withdraws with a scowl.  
  
“Even if you weren’t over a decade younger,” Tendo emphasizes carefully, “it’s still not a good idea.”  
  
“Why not,” Chuck demands, and he’s pressing closer, the promise of touch in every line of his body.  
  
 _Because I can’t do this again_. “I’m leaving tomorrow, Chuck.”  
  
“That doesn’t matter.”  
  
 _You are so young_ , Tendo thinks, and can’t help smiling. “Yeah it does. It can make all the difference.”  
  
The expression on Chuck’s face grows stormy, and Tendo swallows. “You said to prove it,” he growls, closer now, and Tendo has nowhere to go now, backed against the wall. “How can I, if you won’t let me?”  
  
“You have a crush,” Tendo tries, trying to calm his traitorously rapid heart. “It won’t last when I’m gone.”  
  
Instead of answering right away, Chuck just draws closer, until his forearms brace the wall, bracketing Tendo’s head. Tendo has to fight his impulse to snag his fingers in the Ranger-issue jacket and reel him in, chest to chest, hip to hip. Chuck makes no other movement except to watch the flickers of Tendo’s expression with the focus of a bird of prey. Only when he has Tendo’s full attention does he lean in, enunciating soft but clear. “Is that what you tell yourself about Yancy?”

Tendo jerks, sucks in a sharp, shocked breath and unwittingly looks straight into Chuck’s grimly triumphant eyes. He narrows his own eyes, outrage coursing through him and with a rough, angry motion, flips their position, slamming Chuck against the wall. Tendo’s not built like the brick shithouses of Jaeger pilots, but he’s sinewy, a lifetime of physical labor and working with his hands giving him wiry compactness and a vice grip that he puts to use pinning the younger man to the wall.  
  
“Someday,” Tendo growls softly, inches from Chuck, “you’ll pay for that mouth of yours.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Chuck retorts, flashing a grin full of white, mocking teeth. “You gonna try?” Tendo considers him for a long moment; the thrum of lust sings under his skin, but he hesitates, a wild urge to throw caution to the wind warring with his self-preservation. But apparently, Chuck has no qualms; his arms are pinned to the wall, but he thrusts up against the hard curve of Tendo’s thigh, eliciting a startled, strangled sound. Their eyes catch, a long soundless stretch of time, until the moment Tendo breaks and slots his mouth over Chuck’s.  
  
They’re off, kisses full of teeth and hisses, Chuck’s hands too-hard on his hipbones, gripping red bruises into skin. Tendo hauls him close, bites hard at the straining lines of his neck and feels a savage thrill when Chuck gives a full-bodied shudder. With a rough tug, Tendo sends them both overbalancing, and they stumble backwards towards the cot, inelegant and harried. Chuck stops long enough to pull his Henley off, tossing it behind him. He shoves Tendo onto the bed and immediately crawls over him.  
  
“Fucking…shirt,” he snaps against Tendo’s mouth as his hands fumble at the buttons, buttons, lord there’re millions of them.  
  
“Deal,” Tendo gasps tugging at Chuck’s belt buckle which, sweet _Jesus_ , is a fucking Goldberg machine, he wants to complain about _buttons_? He's finally able to shove the pants down and Chuck kicks the rest of it off impatiently. At his first stroke down the cotton-covered bulge, Chuck’s hips buck involuntarily, hands grasping the bedsheets bunched around Tendo’s head. Tendo runs his hand down Chuck’s chest, thumbing over his nipple, feeling the involuntary shudder under his fingers.  
  
“Jesus,” Chuck chokes out, a high flush racing along his cheekbones, startling young and beautiful, and Tendo can’t help but surge up and kiss him, open-mouthed and messy. He’s hard, harder than he can remember in a long time, and it’s sweet relief when he wriggles out of his own jeans—he nearly knees Chuck as he does so but then it’s all worth it when he can grab Chuck’s knees and pull him forward until they are flush against each other, crotches pressed together tightly. They both groan; Tendo has one arm hooked around Chuck’s lower back, the other hand sandwiched between them, aligning and stroking both of them.  
  
Neither of them lasts long. Against his neck, Chuck is breathing soft, hitched breaths of air; his hips move in counterpoint to Tendo’s. There are fingers painfully tight in his hair; a hand joins his own between them, and Tendo groans into the touch, turns into the sweat-salt skin of his shoulder and bites at the line of taut muscle. Above him, Chuck jerks like he’s been struck by lightning, and with a hoarse shout, spills over Tendo’s hand. He slumps forward, a heavy weight that pushes Tendo back down onto his bedsheets, but his hand doesn’t stop stroking. Tendo twists and shakes into the mattress as Chuck kisses him, deep and sure, until he’s moaning and coming all over himself.  
  
“Huh,” Chuck huffs after a very long, slightly dazed silence.  
  
“What?” Tendo asks, because he’s always had to ask. Chuck manages to lift his head up from Tendo’s chest to frown at him.  
  
“That was better than expected,” he tells him, but Tendo catches the hint of insecurity. He’s feeling remarkably benevolent, hollow in a good way, honestly still shell-shocked at what they’ve done, so he just cups the back of Chuck’s head, burrowing his fingers into thick strands.  
  
“Post-coital is not the time to remind others what a jackass you are,” he rasps, feeling almost fond. “Just don’t talk at all.”  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
It’s blessedly silent for another two minutes, before Max trots over and starts whining.

 

* * *

 

 

Tendo can be a magnificent coward when he wants to be, and he leaves Sydney on an earlier flight out than scheduled. Not so much to avoid Chuck, whose early morning eagerness to make use of their last few hours nearly gave both of them matching concussions, but Chuck’s father. He leaves a message for Herc on the inter-station mail system, shakes hands with Gulpilil and those in the LOCCENT, and heads back to Lima, not really understanding what had happened in the last week, and not at all sure how things would fall out. There’d been some troubling rumors recently; budgets being reshuffled and coming up short, increased activity along the Anti-Kaiju wall. When he gets back into his rooms, there’s an urgent missive from Marshal Pentecost. It’s short but confirms plenty of Tendo’s own fears and suspicions. He’s being transferred back to Anchorage, to oversee the reconstruction and renovations of Gipsy Danger.

For a freakishly cocky, horrifically unsocialized Ranger, Chuck is painstakingly earnest in keeping up a continuous correspondence. Tendo gets his first email from him the evening before he’s due to head north. They continue, fairly regularly, once or twice a week, and bemusedly, Tendo answers most of them during his coffee breaks, in between re-attaching Gipsy’s new arm (he’d found his mislabeled folder of scanned, Yancy-augmented designs for Gipsy, and spent an afternoon looking through them, smiling a little bitterly. And then thoughtfully, when he turned up the one with hidden swords along the forearms. He’d then taken a rough proposal to Mako Mori, whose eyes lit up at the idea of more weapons, and they’d pulled an all-nighter redesigning the arms). From Herc, he only gets one email, the day after Striker Eureka is sent to patrol the breach. There are two lines:

_UR A TERRIBLE BASTARD U FUCKER. IM BILLING YOU MY HRS IN THERAPY._

_You hurt him you die. he hurts you, hate to say it but you kinda brought it on yourself mate_.

So, he thinks, that’s okay.

 

The PPDC is undergoing some chaotic policy changes—it’s among the crew, in the news, on the streets, but there’s a growing belief the Shatterdomes are becoming obsolete. Mako’s been reading the op/eds again; he can tell by the fine line between her eyebrows she gets whenever faced with a perplexing equation. There have been too many Rangers whose violent, traumatic deaths have been caught and broadcast live across the world; it’s a “morale” issue, she summarizes for him with an ironic, unhappy twist to her mouth. Tendo doesn’t say that he agrees; not with the proposed Anti-Kaiju wall (what a joke, and only people who haven’t seen a kaiju tear through steel plating like paper thinks they’ll work), but yes, it pretty fucking is demoralizing to see people you care about go up against monstrous alien leviathans of the deep, with only glorified sheets of metal between them and immediate death. Instead he sighs and shakes her shoulder gently.

“Let the marshal handle the politicians, Mako,” he tells her as they step into the hangar. He jerks his chin up at the looming bulk of Gipsy Danger, dark and swarmed with activity. “That’s your job. You know what’s at stake, better than anyone else out there screaming for a wall, so don’t let yourself get distracted.”

“I know,” she agrees, still troubled. “Only that everyone has an opinion, but no one seems to care about ours.”

“They’ll know it, when one of ours kills one of theirs before any more cities are destroyed,” he promises her quietly. She sags a little and sighs.

“This one,” she says, nodding at Gipsy. “We need to make her stronger. Faster. Better.”

“You been listening to the oldies’ station?” he jokes, and then waves it off when she just stares at him blankly. “Then let’s get this party started,” he says instead, adjusting his hard hat and making his way into the bowels of the Jaeger’s chest cavity. When he’d first arrived back in Anchorage to work on Gipsy’s reconstruction, there had been a brief, terrible moment where he wondered if the Gipsy could somehow be haunted, its phantom limb and pilot still trapped somewhere inside the echoing steel exoskeleton. But before he could look away, a bright faced young woman with a straight black bob had popped out from the massive gaping hole of Gipsy’s left side, smiling a little shyly at him.

“You woulda liked her,” Tendo murmurs fondly to the concave hull of the Jaeger, and lays a palm on the cool steel, giving it a final pat before he’s called away.

 

* * *

 

 

_Took Max to the beach today. Surprising how many people still choose to have a liedown there, nevermind that any moment a monster from outer space can pop out of the surf and wipe them all out with one twitch of its tail._

There’s a couple pictures attached, Max with a lolling, doggy smile outfitted with a bright red neckerchief and lime-green Raybans, another of Max sitting on a surfboard positioned in the sand, a pair of wetsuited legs in the background. Tendo smiles in spite of himself. Chuck’s emails are frequent, but rarely much longer than a line or so, and he never sends pictures of himself, only Max, and one occasion, a particularly venomous spider he’d found in his shower. If Chuck were any less self-assured, Tendo would think him like those workaholic kids he knew in high school; not really sure how to do relationships, but trying so damn hard anyways. He takes a sip of his coffee as he thinks about how to reply, and is just about write back when Mako sits down abruptly at his table. She looks around briefly, making sure no one is around, and then leans in over her lunch tray.

“They’re shutting us down,” she hisses, quiet but clear, and Tendo’s tablet clatters to the table.

“ _What_?”

She motions frantically for him to keep her voice down. “Marshal Pentecost just told me,” she whispers rapidly. “They haven’t officially confirmed it yet, but they’re closing down the Domes.”

Tendo stares. Around them, the mess hall’s usual noises seem to recede as his brain tries to wrap around the information. “All of them?” Mako nods, eyes wide and distressed. “But, what about the Jaegers?”

“I don’t know yet, but they’re closing Anchorage first.”

“What about…”

She shakes her head, and shrugs. “The official word should be coming sometime next week.”

Tendo falls back in his chair, stunned. “They can’t seriously think the wall will work,” he utters. “And what, that the kaiju won’t just go around? What if it turns out they fly, what then?”

Mako bites her lip and shrugs again. “We need to keep working on Gipsy,” she says firmly. “I’ll talk to the marshal.”

“Yeah,” Tendo agrees, dazed. She manages a small, painful smile at him, before her eyes catch on his tablet display.

“Oh,” she says, surprised. “Is that Max?”

He blinks. “You know him?”

Mako nods and draws the tablet forward, smiling at the one of Max in sunglasses. “Yes. The marshal is good friends with the elder Hansen, and Chuck and I used to play together. I’ve known Max since he was a puppy, this big,” she motions a space about a foot apart, smiling fondly. She fixes him with a curious look. “How do you have photos of Max? I didn’t realize you knew Chuck.”

“Oh.” He pauses, momentarily flummoxed as to what to say. He finally settles on a vague, “I was in Sydney, working on Striker Eureka for a few weeks last year. Chuck’s very… tenacious.”

She grins at him sympathetically, then gestures at the tablet. “I’m impressed you’ve managed to get him on email. He never sends me pictures of Max.” She sounds wistful.

Huh. “Really? Are you two close?” Tendo asks. Hmm-ing, Mako lifts one shoulder eloquently and picks at her lunch.

“We’re the same age, and our caretakers were often together. We get on.” She looks up, and if her smile is slightly strained, Tendo doesn’t mention it. “A Shatterdome is not the best place for children,” she says wryly, “but it makes for certain shared experiences that are not easily ignored.” Taking in her expression, he decides not to press any further.

“Was he as huge a dick as he is now?” he prompts, and is rewarded by her soft huff of laughter and, “He was worse!”

 

His conversation with Mako sits heavy on his mind, though he isn’t sure why. When a week later, the UN representations call Pentecost into a video conference and announce the end of their funding, he’s on hand, stunned and furious.

“So that’s it? It’s over?”

The marshal’s eyes are hard and flinty. “We don’t need them.”

 A couple days later, he’s still stewing, picking idly at his guitar in LOCCENT. The marshal has offered a chance to relocate to Hong Kong, along with the nearly refitted Gipsy, and Tendo has already accepted. He and Mako are flying out there in the second week of October, and it’s already mid-September. The change leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but at least it’s upfront and unambiguous. There’s no choice in the matter.

Rather, Tendo’s thoughts stray to Mako’s surprise at Chuck’s email. To be honest, Tendo still doesn’t know what to think about the young pilot who—for some obscure reason—has latched onto him. He’s uncomfortably aware that he’s been avoiding the issue since leaving Sydney, despite keeping in regular contact. Having and maintaining relationship is one that needs a lot more interaction than one night together and the internet, or so that’s what Tendo recalls from his pre-PPDC days. But weekly emails had seemed so much more innocuous before he learned that there was a good chance he was the only one getting said weekly emails. And Chuck—competent, arrogant, perfectionist Chuck—is not normal. He’s a Jaeger pilot, who grew up surrounded by other Rangers and the crew of a military base. With a discordant twang of the guitar, Tendo realizes, with a sinking sort of feeling, that he might accidentally be in some sort of Ranger-prodigy’s idea of a serious relationship.

He knows this is a bad, bad situation. He knew it before, and sure as hell believes it now: Jaeger pilots are never, never, _never_ a sure bet in love.

But even so, Tendo knows he’s a lot less upset than he should be, and that, more than anything makes him wish he could kick his own teeth in.

 

Tendo knows the news of Anchorage’s closing has broken when his phone begins beeping frantically at four in the morning.

“Yeah,” he rasps, fumbling for his pants on instinct, senses alert.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” someone growls over the line, and in Tendo’s sleep-fuddled state he mistakes it for Chuck’s.

“Excuse me?” he asks.

There’s an impatient noise, and then the sound of a door closing. “Anchorage. Why didn’t you tell me it was being shut down?”

Tendo pulls the phone away and squints at the display, which has an enormous string of unfamiliar numbers. “…Chuck?”

“No, it’s the Easter Bunny,” Chuck snarks back, and Tendo collapses back into bed with a sigh.

“It’s four a.m.,” he tells him, throwing a forearm over his eyes. “Please tell me you are lying in a ditch somewhere and need me to call a med evac.”

“Never mind that, what about Anchorage?” Chuck demands impatiently.

“Hi, Tendo. How are you? Sorry for being an inconsiderate cock and calling you at ass o’clock to yell about something beyond your control,” Tendo says sweetly.

A sullen silence falls on the other end, and Tendo sighs. “I was going to call you,” he admits, only half-lying. He would’ve sent an email. Probably.

“Fuck you,” Chuck snaps, and Tendo is too mature to say, ‘You wish.’

“I’m going to Hong Kong,” he tells him instead, abruptly.

“What.”

“They’re moving Gipsy Danger there.”

“What’s your point?”

“It’s a nine hour flight, instead of twenty-four,” Tendo drawls with deliberate carelessness. He still doesn’t know what to think about this relationship, but he can’t deny his heart picks up pace with the possibility of seeing Chuck again.

“Oh.” Chuck sounds…surprised. “I- yeah.” Tendo thinks he sounds cautiously pleased.

“Yeah, so,” Tendo shifts his hold on the phone and wriggles comfortably into his bed. He decides a little revenge is in order. “Now I’m wide awake, with three more hours before I need to be up. It’s your fault, so you should help a brother out. Tell me slowly, what you’re wearing.”

“My uniform, why do you want to—wait?— _Christ_ , are you—is this— _phone sex_?!”

“Talk dirty to me, babe,” Tendo croons, and laughs hard when Chuck swears and drops his phone, flustered.

 

* * *

 

 

In Hong Kong, the cold damp seeps into every crevice of the aging old Shatterdome, and Tendo familiarizes himself with the ever-present smell of damp metal and mold. The city is lit like a beacon, a madhouse of activity and people that he’s never seen. Even Beijing, with its endless, swarming population is not quite like this, lights and noise and underwear flapping between windows, dogs skulking, the sound of a thousand mah-jong tiles cracking, the smell of hot, fragrant oil and dank alleyways, the salt sea air clinging in the corners and buffeting whiffs of incense. Tendo is overwhelmed and a little bit in love; it helps when he’s able to wake up in the mornings and have hot jook and custard buns every day for breakfast, the real stuff, like what YeYe used to buy from the Richmond in pale pink pastry boxes.

Now that the PPDC has made their final decision, Pentecost is scrambling to gather resources and prepare for a last stand. The marshal travels constantly between the remaining Shatterdomes and PPDC headquarters, leaving much of the daily running of Hong Kong to Mako and Tendo. In between prepping Gipsy Danger and working on Crimson Typhoon and helping the transition of resources from Anchorage, Lima, Tokyo, and Panama, Tendo barely has time to leave the Shatterdome. He does manage to befriend the Wei Tang brothers with a friendly, mangled “ _Nong hao va_?” and plays ball with them in between shifts—they’ve got hoops stashed just about everywhere, including one secretly tucked up against Crimson’s ankle joint. ‘没事干”，Cheung shrugs, and sinks a perfect jump shot. Tendo considers insisting on hardhats at least.

“You’d hate them,” he tells Chuck. “They’re just like you.”

“We’ve met,” Chuck says sourly. “They’re fucking unprofessional; you know they once snuck kebabs and a hot plate into the Conn-pod while on call, and had themselves a bloody barbie? Why are you hanging out with them anyways?” He’s always bizarrely jealous whenever Tendo mentions other Jaeger pilots, never mind that they’ve all worked together often enough.

“They’re good people,” Tendo defends absently. He’s got the phone jammed between his shoulder and ear as he reviews the latest budget requests, marking the sheets up with notes and comments with a felt red pen. The LOCCENT is empty tonight—no late night work scheduled on the Jaegers, no sims tomorrow, an odd pocket of almost complete stillness, if only for a night. He’s sitting in the one decent chair they have in the room, legs on the dash, carefully positioned away from any glowing buttons and dials, Dusty Springfield playing softly from his tablet.

“Sure, until they try to engage their Thundercloud formation and everyone finds out they replaced the third arm with a loofah or a floor lamp or whatever.”

“Hey, have a little faith in me,” Tendo objects, and scrawls a little, “No Sam go home you’re drunk” in the margins of the paper. “I’d at least make sure it was something sharp. Like a fork.” Chuck snorts, reluctantly amused. “What are you doing anyways? Don’t you have training? A pressing meeting?”

“They locked me out,” he admits sullenly, and Tendo laughs.

“Not surprised,” he comments

“Not funny,” Chuck growls. “They’re missing the point—every single one of those fat drongos waving their arses about in their mountain villas—the wall’s a fucking joke. So piloting Jaegers is life-threatening and dangerous. Everyone bloody knows that; but what are we supposed to do? Roll over and let the kaiju rampage? People die everyday, but if it means one a’ us dies and Sydney or London or Tokyo survives, they’re not gonna keep me from that Jaeger.”

 A small clatter makes Tendo realize he’s dropped his pen. The sudden hush is filled with tension, and there’s a low suck of breath on the other end of the line.

“Look, Tendo, I-” Now Chuck sounds stilted, young and uncomfortable. “You know I—that’s only if—” he cuts himself off with a frustrated sound. Tendo finds his gaze on Gipsy Danger through the LOCCENT window, the Jaeger’s metal hull gleaming dully under auxiliary lights, one side beaten and battered, one arm still visibly different and waiting for the final paint job. He does know, and that’s the problem, isn’t it?

“Yeah, Chuck,” Tendo finally says, because Chuck is expecting him to say something. He doesn’t feel much like talking anymore.

The phone crackles with a sudden burst of sound, and multiple voices all talking over each other. “Hang on,” Chuck orders, distracted. “The meeting just got out.”

Tendo drops his face into one hand, shaking his head. “What, kid, were you sitting outside the door?”

“No, I was walking Max,” Chuck lies belligerently. “Hold up.” Faintly, there’s a smattering of footsteps and raised voices, too fuzzy to be understood clearly. Tendo thinks it might be Herc he hears, but the outraged, “Bullshit!” is all Chuck. Herc’s tone sharpens, and the two of them continue their talk, rapid-fire and punctuated with pockets of silence. Tendo isn’t too anxious—anything important, and he’d hear about it at the next debrief anyways.

“Tendo? Still there?”

“Yep. What’s going on?”

There’s a small pause. “They’re shutting down Sydney.” His voice is flat, clearly upset, but Tendo can’t read the following moment of hesitation as well. “Vulcan’s done for, off to Oblivion. But the marshal wants Striker in Hong Kong.”

Ah. Tendo makes a small noise of assent. “I suspected,” he admits.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Chuck asks, exasperated.

Shrugging, even though he can’t see it, Tendo flips the pen between his fingers. “You’d’ve found out sooner or later. When are you shipping out?”

Chuck exhales explosively, fuming a little, but Tendo ignores him. He’s always chewing over something or another. “After Christmas,” he finally says shortly.

“They’re pushing up the timeline,” he mutters, frowning and opening up an IM window on his tablet with Mako. “How’s the marshal taking it?”

“He left right away, didn’t get to talk to him.”

Tendo opens his mouth to reply, when his tablet alerts him of a new email from Pentecost. A cold chill, then hot rush fills him when he reads it, and his feet come slamming to the floor.

“Tendo?” Chuck demands. “What is it?”

Tendo can’t look away from the email. “I gotta go, Chuck. I’ll see you in two months.”

“Wait, hold on, Choi, what’s going on? What’s wrong? Is it a breach?” Chuck’s voice has sharpened, his voice serious and Tendo thinks he must already be reaching for his gear.

“No, not that,” he manages, tearing his eyes away. Gipsy Danger stares back, shadowed and looming. “They’re finding pilots for Gipsy,” he says out loud, unsure how to feel.

“S’at all?” Chuck breathes. “So?”

But Tendo just says, neutrally, “They want Raleigh Becket back.”

 

* * *

 

 

Tendo doesn’t tend to think on the past, pre-K-Day that is. It’s irrelevant now, doesn’t haunt him the same way it used to, when the worst thing to happen never meant raging alien monsters destroying your hometown. He has ink trailing under the collar of his buttoned-up shirts and sprawling across his arms and hands, black cursive lines and words that meant something different fifteen years ago, than it does now. He’s touched them up since then, but hasn’t gotten any new ones. When Newt arrives on the next transport in, they take a rare night out into the city proper, the two of them, plus Mako and Newt’s labmate, a tweedy, high-strung Hermann Gottlieb who walked with a cane that swung freely stabbed frequently whenever he disagreed with Newt. They start off at a nice rooftop bar that Mako had suggested, bougie enough that most of the bartenders and clientele were classed up and foreign. Newt and Tendo sip at their drinks peaceably and exchanging covert looks while the four chat and bicker amiably. After two drinks, Mako and Gottlieb headed back to base, and thirty minutes after that, Tendo is in Wanchai, roaring encouragement with the crowd as Newt, in a vintage dentist’s chair, tilts back with the bartender pouring a fuckton of tequila into his open mouth. Coyote’s has too many coeds and dance music to be Tendo’s usual choice, but Newt loves terrible bars, with a frankly disturbing passion. They barhop around Wanchai, up and down Lockhart Road, weaving and ducking into one bar that Newt insists they check out—its entire shots menu is named after Kaijus

And after downing the Onibaba and Meathead in quick succession, Tendo decides to be responsible and drag Newt out before he can drink the entire roster of kaiju. Still, there’s only so much Tendo can do, and he has to admit, Newt has never been a great influence on him. They end up at a tattoo parlor that Tendo suspects is a Triad front; no one has that many “receptionists” with bulging biceps manning a shop past midnight. Sadly, Tendo is more comfortable  here than he likes to admit, and his Cantonese, a mangled mash of Chinglish and fluent street slang gets them set up in the back with a bald, skinny man of indeterminate age and a poker face to rival Marshal Pentecost. Newt goes first, adding the outline for a new monster on the back of his left shoulder. He tells Tendo, “Man, I know they’re awful ‘n all, but fuck, aren’t they gorgeous?”

With anyone else, Tendo would have kept silent, but Newt’s someone else entirely, so he says, “You’re fucked up, brother. And every time you get one of those nasty punks tattooed in, is another guarantee someone’ll punch in your face.” They both laugh; Tendo’d done it, a month after he’d transferred to Lima and Newt’d walked in to LOCCENT in short sleeves and Knifehead in proud, fresh colors along his forearm.

“Hey, you should do something,” Newt tells him after he gets set, sitting up and beaming, straining to see over his shoulder.

“Nah,” Tendo shrugs. “I got nothing I want.”

“Lies, lies, lies,” Newt accuses. “Think harder. No pussying out. Dude, you should get a Jaeger on your ass.”

“You should get one up yours,” Tendo shoots back.

Newt wags a finger at him, grinning as he shrugs his shirt back on—long sleeves, rolled down. “Feisty. I like that. C’mon. C’mon. Get one too. Get one. Get it. Get itgetitgetitgetit.”

“No.”

So of course, an hour later, Tendo staggers out, bumping elbows with Newt, a small, neat square of gauze taped over the inside of his wrist.

 

There’s no more time to waste after that—Newt disappears into the labs and quickly begins building a reputation for mad sciencing and shouting matches with his lab partner. Tendo has his own hands full running a full set of diagnostics and tests on the three Jaegers they now have in the hangar, as well as prepping for the arrival for Striker Eureka. Mako divides her time between gazing yearningly at Gipsy, grimly interviewing pilot candidates, and running the Shatterdome in place of the marshal, who is still abroad. Chuck and Herc take down two more kaiju in the meantime, Chuck calling rather than emailing after every victory to gloat and bitch about the PPDC. Tendo doesn’t ask him to stop, doesn’t say that Chuck’s dangerously close to setting up a pattern that he’s going to break at some point.

Mutavore attacks Sydney, and Tendo is too busy at the command center, Gulpilil on speakerphone, to properly appreciate the final middle finger that Striker Eureka directs to the PPDC and their budget cuts. He does catch the following interview with Chuck though, whose bitchface and angry boasting somehow still comes off as heroic. Despite his internationally publicized dig, Sydney Shatterdome shuts down as scheduled. Tendo is coming off a shift when the first convoys from Sydney touch down, and he stays on an extra two hours to get Striker Eureka situated into the hangar. By the time he reaches the mess, it is awash in new faces, boisterous voices calling over everyone else, friends reuniting, making new acquaintances.

“Tendo!” Herc shouts over the noise, and Tendo looks around to spot the elder Hansen bearing down on him, grinning widely. “Good to see you, man. How’s doing?”

“Hey Herc, it’s good. Saw the fight from yesterday, nice work,” Tendo laughs, greeting the man with a back-slapping hug. “Have you gotten a chance to settle in yet?”

“Literally just arrived,” Herc shrugs. “Grabbin’ a bite, before we check out the bunks.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tendo agrees, bobbing his head. They make small talk, catching up on the past year as they wait in line for food, then search for a table. Only when they’ve sat down and started making inroads on the bland meatloaf that Tendo finally clears his throat awkwardly, asking, “So, how’s Chuck?”

Herc scoffs, and levels a narrow-eyed glare at him for good measure. “I should probably be threatening to tear out your spine,” he says gruffly, and Tendo catches some flash of emotion he can’t quite parse in Herc’s good-natured face. “But he’s been easier to manage since he’s had someone to talk to.”

“I,” Tendo says, but then shuts up when a hard scrabble against the concrete announces the arrival of Max, who careens and burrows into his legs in a cheerful, whiny greeting. A moment later, a shadow falls over the table, and Chuck plunks himself down next to Tendo, scowling at his father.

“You talk too much, old man,” he growls, but Herc just glares back. Chuck’s gotten even taller than Tendo remembers, and he’s filled out, his shoulders broader and harder, the planes of his face sharper. What hasn’t changed is the attitude.

“Hello, Chuck,” Tendo says dryly, and then blinks when Chuck sneaks a glance at him and smiles, a tiny thing that is strangely soft on such a severe face.

“Lookin’ good, Danny Zuko,” he tells him, the smile morphing into a grin. There is genuine delight lurking in his eyes; Tendo swallows around the sudden pressure in his chest, and suddenly remembers, very vividly, that nearly two years have gone by, and the last time they’d seen each other in person, Chuck had been decidedly less dressed.

“And I’d thought you’d all grown up,” Tendo drawls. “But there you go calling me all sorts of names.”

“Just asking after the state of your hair,” Chuck protests lightly, and absently dropping a chunk of meatloaf down to Max, “Seeing as it’s grown its own personality.”

“Jealousy is an ugly look on you,” Tendo tells him, but smiling just the same. He stops when he glances up and catches Herc watching him, expression carefully neutral. Thankfully, his comm chirps then, and he’s being called into the hangar for some minor emergency.

“I’m taking off,” he says, shoveling in one last bite of his dinner. “See you around, boys.” He lets himself clasp Chuck’s shoulder briefly before leaving, already deep in conversation with one of the Crimson Typhoon’s techs over the comm. By the time he’s turned the corner out of the mess into an empty corridor, it’s quiet enough that he hears the sounds of footsteps running up behind him; Tendo half-turns, stepping out of the way, but instead is nearly bowled over when Chuck barrels into him and locks him into a tight embrace that he reflexively returns, hands flying up to clench the back of the leather jacket. He’s surrounded by warmth, the faintly airplane smell, under that, a scent that is all Chuck, one he didn’t even know he missed until it struck a painful, sweet chord in him.

“I’ve missed you,” Chuck whispers into his ear, a tiny, fierce grin on his face, ablaze with joy.

And Tendo, because he can admit to himself even this, leans in to kiss him hard and fast. “Come by in an hour,” he tells him and gently disengages himself from Chuck. “I’ll see you.” Chuck darts in for another kiss, short and sweet before deigning to let him go, disappearing back towards the mess with as much alacrity as he’d come. Tendo makes it to the hangar without being waylaid anymore, but it’s only when Wing whistles at him and says, “Damn, boss, what’d they put in your coffee?” that he realizes he’s still grinning uncontrollably.

“Blood of my enemies, my man” he shoots back, wrestling his expression into something more solemn, and directs their attention back to the finicky energy core.

 

Tendo wakes up between one breath and the next, coming alert almost immediately. The only light in the room is from the analog alarm clock next to his bed; he squints at it. Still another two hours before he needs to be up. The heavy, hot weight is motionless besides him, one arm slung over his waist and pinning him to the bed. He looks over, where the faint greenish glow is just enough to limn the edges of Chuck’s face, peaceful in sleep. He gets up carefully, shifting out from under Chuck’s arm and pads to his desk, where his tablet is charging. A swipe of his fingers and the home screen pops up. A couple new emails, reminders from his calendar. He ignores those and sits down, tapping through his image gallery until he finds the file from 2020. After a brief hesitation, he opens it up. Immediately, rows of pictures appear, people smiling at the camera, Jaeger limbs, himself standing on the shoulder of Gipsy, holding a monkey wrench. The Beckets are in most of them, one or the other or both, some with Tendo, most not. He swipes past the photos slowly until he gets to a candid of Yancy. Raleigh had taken the picture on Tendo’s digital camera; the three of them had climbed the riggings of the Shatterdome until they could hoist themselves up out onto the roof. Tendo had done it with a bottle of Jim Beam, Raleigh had brought Tostitos, but Yancy had been the smartest and brought cheap sunglasses for all three of them, because it may have been nine at night, but the sun was still out and bright over the Alaska horizon.

It is a beautiful picture; Raleigh had been sitting up close, and the photo crops out almost everything but Yancy’s three-quarter profile, starkly outlined against a blurry background of Tendo’s face and Shatterdome roofing. Yancy’s eyes are half-lidded, chin tilted down and lips half-parted, the moment before it crinkles into laughter. He’s caught eyeing Tendo’s direction, responding maybe to a question or gentle ribbing. Tendo gazes at the picture for a long time before he manages to swipe to the next.

Chuck wakes up to Tendo slumped over the desk dozing, hand still on the tablet. Tendo knows this, because when he finally blinks awake to the chiming of his alarm clock, his neck is screaming bloody murder and Chuck is perched on the edge of his desk, scrolling through his pictures album with an unreadable expression. Silently, Tendo pulls the tablet away and presses the power button so the screen goes dark on an image of Yancy, Raleigh, and Tendo with their arms around each other’s shoulder in front of Portage Glacier, squinting against the sunlight.

“You still miss him?” Chuck asks, quiet and a little flat.

“You really want me to answer that?” Tendo replies, frowning up at him. He just shrugs, jaw set, so Tendo sighs a little and arches, cracking his spine back into place. He rolls his shoulder, deliberately crosses his arms over Chuck’s warm thigh and sets his chin atop his forearm. “You miss your mother, don’t you?” The muscles under his arm stiffen, but Tendo just continues. “I miss him. Some days more than others. Sometimes not at all.” His eyes slide closed. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Chuck is silent for a long time, and in the end, Tendo gets up and starts getting ready for work.

 

There are meetings and conferences, strategy brainstorming and crises management sessions. It’s become increasingly clear that the marshal has only so many cards up his sleeve, and most of them ride on one final gambit. Tendo sits in as Jaeger consultant to all of them, at the marshal’s left. He’s in the room when they finalize the decision to use Striker Eureka to drop the payload into the breach. In fact, he’d helped shape their decision. Afterwards, when Chuck jogs up behind him, Tendo wonders if he understands that Tendo has just helped him sign his own death warrant. Instead, he lets himself be drawn closer with an arm around his neck and allows Chuck to ramble on about how awesome it’ll be to kick their collective kaiju arse without much more comment.

 

Raleigh arrives amidst one of those cold, pounding winter storms; Tendo doesn’t know this personally of course. He’s been in command the whole day, supervising Gipsy Danger’s final preparations, and readying the Drift for Raleigh and whoever his new co-pilot is. He knows Mako desperately wants to be chosen, but is also holding herself back on account of the marshal, and it’s been making her as fidgety and snippy as she could possibly get for the past week. In any case, she gives him the heads up over the commlink when they head towards Gipsy Danger, and he manages to catch them just as Raleigh’s ogling a newly-restored Gipsy.

“How do ya like the ride, Becket boy?” Tendo shouts over the noise. Raleigh raises his eyebrows in amusement as he comes through the doorway, reeling off a list of Gipsy’s updates, before he catches Tendo up in a hug, one of those manly back-pounding things. It’s been a long time since he’s had a Becket brand of hugging, and he savors it.

 “You look better,” he says after the initial greetings have gone down, grinning at Raleigh. The younger Becket has a few more lines in his face, is a little thicker, but he’s smiling and jovial again, despite the weight behind his eyes and the slight slump of his shoulders.

Tendo imagines Raleigh must see something similar in him as well, because Raleigh clasps his shoulders, saying low and earnest, “It’s really good to see you, Tendo. I…” he hesitates, “We should talk.”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Tendo agrees. “I’ll comm you after dinner.”

 

“Your boy called him deadweight,” Mako frets in a hurried whisper through the comm link, and Tendo drops the spanner on his foot.

“What?” he replies after grimacing silently and exaggeratedly for a few excruciating seconds. “What boy? Who’s a deadweight?”

“Chuck really really dislikes Raleigh,” Mako says unhappily.

“That’s old news,” Tendo points out, then, “What do you mean, ‘my boy’?”

“You mean he isn’t?” she asks distractedly. “Half of engineering saw you two in the west corridor. Do you think we should keep them apart?”

“ _Half of_ —Christ,” Tendo mutters. _Jaeger crews_ , he thinks uncharitably, _worse than a pack of Chinatown housewives_. “Look, Mako, they’ll work out their problems on their own, we should stay out of it.”

“You didn’t hear Chuck,” Mako says a little darkly, and Tendo rolls his eyes.

“I’ll talk to him, okay?” he checks the time, and frowns. “Aren’t you judging copilot trials right now?”

She makes a little noise. “None of these cadets are good enough.”

He sits back on his heels and sighs through his teeth. “Then do something about it,” he suggests gently. “Mako, I know the marshal doesn’t want you to, but at some point, you gotta do what you know is best. Else you’ll never be satisfied.”

“Maybe,” Mako says reluctantly. “I must go.”

“Good luck,” he says, before the line goes quiet. The spanner is still on the ground, and he bends to pick it up.  Then, curious, turns one of the monitors on to stream the Kwoon Room’s livefeed.

 

He’s talking to Sasha and Aleksis about Cherno Alpha’s digital interfacing in his office, getting their feedback on the new update, when Raleigh pokes his head in through the doorway.

“Hey, Ten- oh, sorry. Didn’t realize you were busy,” he winces politely.

“Is okay,” Sasha says brusquely. “We’re just finishing up.” She and Aleksis straighten up from their positions around the conference table, quickly wrapping up the conversation. Tendo scribbles a few notes for himself, before assuring them the changes will be done before the next test run, and they leave, barely sparing Raleigh more than a passing glance. It leaves the two of them grinning at each other like boys.

 “How the hell are you, brother?”

Raleigh laughs, ducks his head a little. “Good, man. I think, better now, than in a long while.”

“Yeah?” Tendo leans back, smiling up at him. “I saw the trials you know. You and Mako, that’s a good match.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Raleigh’s smile lights up his whole damn face. “She’s perfect; I haven’t felt anything like it, not since—in a long time.”

“She’s been wanting it for a long time too,” Tendo tells him, ignoring the twist in his chest at Raleigh’s slip. “She worked damn hard on Gipsy, oversaw every step. Pretty sure she would have riveted every rivet if given the time.”

“That’s real nice,” Raleigh admits, eyes softening. “You guys did real good with her.”

“Just wait ‘til you see how she runs. Better than ever.” Smiling, Tendo gestures to a free chair. “You want anything to drink? There’s some water, maybe soda in the minifridge.”

“Nah, sit down, I’m fine.” Tendo shrugs and tosses him a Coke anyways, takes water himself before settling in the chair next to him.

“You settling in okay?” Tendo asks. Raleigh shrugs noncommittally.

“Some are less than welcoming. Nothing less than the usual,” he says wryly.

Tendo shakes his head ruefully. “I heard from Mako about Chuck,” he admits.

“Yeah, what a piece of work,” Raleigh laughs, sipping his soda. “Impressive skills, cute dog, but man. He’s a cocky sumbitch, ain’t he?” He quiets a little, still smiling faintly. “Reminds me of myself actually.”

“Oh, no,” Tendo snorts. “Chuck is in a place all his own. Believe me. At least you never made me want to brain myself with power tools. But you know, he’s a serious, passionate kid. He really believes in what he’s doing, just doesn’t remember the world’s not as black and white as he thinks.”

“You sound like you know him pretty well,” Raleigh says.

“I’ve known him awhile now,” Tendo explains. “We’re friends.”

“Just friends?” he asks, carefully neutral, regarding Tendo with calm blue eyes, a shade darker than Tendo’s used to dreaming about.

“You been talking to the engineers?” Tendo shoots back, raising one eyebrow, and Raleigh chuckles.

“The ground crew, actually. Ran into Wing earlier; he caught me up on some of the latest. You, my friend, and a certain cocky Jaeger pilot are hot topic number one.” He points a finger at him and cocks an enquiring eyebrow.

Tendo drops his face into his palms and groans. When he can bring himself to look at his friend again, Raleigh is smiling faintly, rolling the soda can between his hands meditatively.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” he tells him, quietly. “I know you didn’t want to hear this the last time, but I really think he would’ve wanted you to be. I know he did,” he corrects himself.

“I know,” Tendo says, because Yancy’s good like that. “I am.”

The hum of the air ventilation takes over the silence between them; somewhere outside, there’s the clatter of a dropped clipboard, and then, a door slamming. Finally, Raleigh lets his head fall forward, eyes fixed on the tips of his fingers.

“He—You know, he loved you.”

And yeah, Tendo knew that too. But Raleigh’s shaking his head when he sees Tendo’s expression.

“No, no you don’t—I’m saying, he loved you. And I think, he could have-”

“Raleigh,” Tendo cuts in, “Stop. Don’t,” he realizes his knuckles are white around his bottled water, and he feels an old bitterness seep past his tongue. Tendo doesn’t want to hear it— _can’t_ hear it. He sighs and thumbs the divots in the water bottle. “I’m tired of mourning possibilities,” he admits quietly. The flare of indignation in Raleigh’s face is brief, and leaves behind an expression lined with weary sorrow. Tendo can’t help but add, “I’m sorry, Rawls. I loved him, too.”

Raleigh manages to muster up a crooked smile. “But you loved me best, right?”

Tendo laughs then, a little too loudly, but he reaches over to ruffle Raleigh’s hair fondly. “Bet your ass, kiddo.”

 

Chuck usually is in the gym after dinner, walking Max on the treadmill while he does weights. Tendo stops by after his talk with Raleigh and leans against the doorway, watching Max trot happily along while Chuck works out on the weight machine, earbuds in and loud enough that Tendo can hear the tinny buzz over the noise of the gym. There’s no one else currently in the weight room, so Tendo allows himself to stare his fill of the young pilot. The first time he’d been attracted to another boy had been in high school; Hiram had been unlike Chuck and Yancy. He’d been a skinny, wiry punk with tattooed collar bones and a messy sweep of black hair, fingers forever stained from cigarettes, who never spoke if he could snarl and kissed like he was waging war. Most of Tendo’s old girlfriends were similar types—small and dark, fuck-you eyes and twisted smiles that he’d kiss away with teeth. Yancy had been the biggest departure—Tendo wonders if that’s why he’s also been the hardest to let go. He’s not sure where Chuck stands on the spectrum. He also wonders distantly if losing Chuck’ll be even worse than Yancy. On one hand, he’s prepared. On the other, he will have concrete memories to mourn: messy lovemaking and emails and stupid midnight phonecalls and feeding Max potato chips just to watch Chuck’s face turn apoplectic.

He shifts his weight and the movement catches Chuck’s eye. Tendo lifts his fingers in greeting, and after a moment, Chuck gets up and dials the treadmill off so Max can trot off, panting, towards a dish of water in the corner. Then, wiping at his face with a towel, Chuck lopes towards him at an easy pace.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Tendo answers, tilts his head. “I can wait if you want to keep going.”

“Nah,” Chuck shrugs. He slings an arm around Tendo’s shoulders and presses a kiss to his temple as they leave the gym, Max wriggling ahead. “Just clearin’ my head.”

“Yeah? How’d it work?”

“We’ll see,” Chuck says darkly. “I can’t believe they’re letting that deserter back into a Jaeger.”

“Lay off,” Tendo says, a tad sharply. “He’s got the best chance of piloting Gipsy; he knows what he’s doing.”

“You don’t think he should’ve stayed?” Chuck demands. “You don’t feel even the tiniest bit betrayed that he left all of you scrambling while terrible fuckers kept rising out of the sea?”

Tendo stares at Chuck. “His brother died. While they were still in each other’s head.” Huffing a soft breath, Tendo shakes his head, and admits, “ _I’m_ the one who feels like I’ve betrayed them.”

“How?” Chuck stares back incredulously. Tendo looks away.

“I fucking love the Jaegers,” he admits. “Giant robots with plasma guns and shit-kicking capability. But just because they’re beautiful and badass, doesn’t mean they treat their pilots kindly. And even then, it’s my job to put the pilots in there anyways, and lead the prayer in hoping for the best.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Chuck scowls.

Shaking head, Tendo lets his arm slip around Chuck to rest along the small of his back. “Guilt rarely does.”

In one of those startling moments of insight, Chuck looks at him for a long time before looking straight ahead. “If it isn’t you putting us in those monsters, it’d be someone else. And anyone with half a brain would rather have you nattering in their ear than anybody else when sea monsters come calling.”

 

Mako and Raleigh’s first Drift is certainly a memorable occasion. Tendo has barely a moment to spare for Newt’s unsanctioned, unmonitored Drift (which, he notes to have a serious talk about safety precautions with ASAP, also, dude coulda just hit him up; he’d totally help a brother out) before the console starts beeping alarmingly.

“Both out of alignment,” he mutters, and scrambles for the mic. Raleigh’s babbling into his ear, but Tendo cuts him off impatiently, eyes flitting between the flashing red vital stats and Gipsy Danger. “You’re stabilizing, but Mako is way out!”

When Gipsy Danger’s right hand cannon begins powering up, the frozen LOCCENT jumps into action. Tendo shouts everyone to clear the room before rushing to override the Jaeger and cursing himself for not disabling the weapons before commencing the test. Not until Chuck scrambles up beside him that he realizes both Chuck and Herc haven’t left.

“Out of the way!” he yells at Chuck, who’s frantically fumbling with the wires behind the console. _Well_ , Tendo thinks in the back of his mind as his body scrambles for a solution, _this would be such a beautifully ironic way to lose this war._ Brought low by humanity’s own mechanized hubris. Herc points out the main power, and Tendo grasps with both hands and pulls.

Thankfully, they’re just in time, right as the marshal charges into LOCCENT, wild-eyed and furious. As Gipsy whines to a halt, Tendo allows himself to slump, limbs shaky with relief, leaning subtly against Chuck’s warm, solid weight.

He thinks that’s that, but probably should have paid more attention to the way Chuck’s hand had grasped onto his with such strength and ferocity he’d left white imprints against Tendo’s skin, and the way he’d kissed him fervently, just outside LOCCENT, an urgent, earnest thing that only ended because Marshal Pentecost coughed pointedly from behind. Chuck had taken the opportunity to corral Pentecost into a meeting, and Tendo had slunk off, ears burning.

Frankly, he kind of wishes he’d seen the fight in person—Tendo’s always enjoyed a good, old-fashioned brawl, even if it’s between his best friend’s kid brother and his—whatever Chuck was. When he stops by to drop off the feedback reports, Mako is still crushed and withdrawn, but Tendo coaxes her into telling him about how Raleigh, dear sweet Raleigh, decided to play knight in shining armor, even though Mako could have easily handled herself. Often had against Chuck and worse, in the past.

“I’ll talk to him,” he finds himself promising, wondering when he’d become the Chuck whisperer. Mako thanks him listlessly, eyes fixed on her clipboard. He pats her arm consolingly.

“But when it was good, it was good, yeah?” he tries, and she raises her head a little at that, catching his eye with a ghost of a smile.

“We were perfect,” she agrees wistfully.

 

There’s no time though.

He’s just made his way back to LOCCENT with his standard breakfast fare of coffee(s) and a bagel when the breach monitoring sensors go off. Within ten minutes, he’s debriefing the entire crew in LOCCENT, the pilots all already in gear. The new kaiju are Mark IVs, and a surge of welcome adrenaline jump starts the Shatterdome. This, he knows how to handle.  

“Good luck, boys and girls,” he wishes, and then sends them striding forth into the harbor. Fat amount of good it did.

 

Chuck comes back, little worse for the wear, and Tendo wants to crowd him against his bunk, wants to crush him close, wants to shake him and kiss him and never speak to him again. Most of all, he wants to tell him, “Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again, you little shit, else I’ll show you what else is a bad idea with a flare gun,” except that Chuck is a Jaeger pilot, and Tendo knows better than to set himself up for disappointment.

In the non-existent downtime between the return of Mako and Raleigh triumphant, and the final opening of the breach, Tendo has one moment of maybe, maybe, _maybe_. Maybe Chuck won’t die today. Maybe their plan will go off without a hitch. Maybe the kaiju never come back.

Instead, he sees Chuck for the last time, angry and confused, out of armor, just as Marshal Pentecost reveals himself as his new copilot; Tendo’d suspected it. The timeline has been stepped up; Tendo’s suddenly aware of every second that passes until they’re either saved or dead. After the marshal finishes his speech to the crew, Tendo glances around, watches the crew scatter to their tasks with renewed vigor. He glances down at his clipboard, then at the war clock, counting up in inevitable ticks.

“Give me ten minutes,” he says over the comm to his crew in LOCCENT, and heads off to the bunks.

 The door to Chuck’s unit is closed, but unlocked, and Tendo knocks once quietly before letting himself in. “You need any help?” Tendo asks quietly. Chuck shakes his head, carefully hanging up his jacket before sitting on his bed. After a moment, Tendo wanders over, and Chuck reaches out, snagging his wrist and pulling him closer. His thumb rubs against the soft underside of Tendo’s wrist, pushing back the rosary there.

“You alright?” Chuck asks.

“I’m good,” Tendo says easily. “You should get into the drive suit soon.”

“I’m half tempted to let Gipsy handle everything,” Chuck scowls jokingly. “Drifting with the marshal? I’d almost rather sit this one out.”

Tendo’s heart gives a traitorous leap, even though he has a heavy suspicion that won’t be the case. “It’s not nice to get my hopes up like that,” he says. Chuck glances at him sharply, hearing something in his voice. But Tendo just grins crookedly at him and turns away.

“Tendo-” Chuck starts, refusing to let go of his wrist. “Hey. Choi. Look at me.”

Reluctantly, Tendo glances back. Chuck waits until he has his attention, and then, deliberately, raises his wrist and presses his lips to the ink-black lines tattooed there.

“I’m not done proving myself,” he swears, low and fierce. His eyes gleam in the dim lighting, and despite being the wrong shade of blue, they’re still beautiful enough to haunt Tendo’s thoughts. Tendo leans down and kisses him, slow and sweet, memorizing the shape of his lips and the clean scent of his soap. This is the end, they are both well-aware. Chuck’s hands tighten against Tendo’s suit and trembles in fine tremors.

“I need to get back,” Tendo finally whispers hoarsely, and pulls away.

 

* * *

**Epilogue.**

 

When the entire world has finished celebrating and the Shatterdome starts turning into a research and monitoring station, Herc searches him out on the roof of the Shatterdome, Jim Beam balanced against his leg and sunglasses propped up on his hair. When the marshal sits next to him, he silently passes the glass flask over and never takes his eyes off the Hong Kong skyline. It’s a long, melancholy silence that stirs between them, one that Tendo can’t bring himself to break. But finally, Herc looses a long breath.

“I just wanted to say thank you,” he admits quietly.

“What for?”

Herc squints against the setting sun and smiles a little brokenly. “You made him really happy, you know? The boy was stupid with it.”

“I’m glad,” Tendo replies, not knowing what else to say.

Chuckling, Herc shakes his head. “He actually—you know, until he met you, he never dreamed about life beyond the Shatterdome. But you gave him something to look forward to, even something as mundane as driving the Great Sunshine Way. That’s all—that’s all a father like me could really ask for, isn’t it?” The last words are bitter with self-recrimination and weary grief.

“I admired him,” Tendo confesses, and shoots a small grin at his companion. “You raised him right, Herc. He was arrogant as hell, but he stuck by his principles. That’s all you.”

“Yeah?” Herc says, smiling. “Terrible kid. But a good man. That’s my boy.”

Tendo tilts the flask in a toast to the watery horizon. “To the boy.”

After the sun has slipped past the horizon line and the sky has gone dark, Herc asks, low and uncertain, “Did you love him?”

Tendo thinks on it for a long while. He thinks about brassy, bright laughter and muddy blue eyes, broad, dry palms and the sweat-dampened tendrils of hair curling against the neck. He thinks about the ink on his own wrist, obscured by both watch and rosary. He thinks about lying, he thinks about denying Herc’s suspicions. He thinks about a million things, none of which can answer Herc’s question, but he does his best anyways.

“I could have,” he tells him, utterly truthful, and can’t find it in himself to say anything more.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Aw, I made myself sad...
> 
> -Tendo was not easy to write.
> 
> -Cheung basically says, "Nothing else to do".
> 
> -Further note: apparently the Wei Tang trips are from Shanghai? So Tendo greets them in Shanghainese-- I swear I didn't fuck up basic pinyin. 
> 
> -Title from "Call it Stormy Monday" by Albert King.
> 
> -Feedback and constructive crit is so, so welcome. Just be constructive, please.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [They Call it Stormy Monday (but Tuesday's Just as Bad) [Fanmix]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169380) by [Thallys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thallys/pseuds/Thallys)




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